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2013.10.28 Meeting Notes
This Crime & Beyond recap is Rated R, and as the above warning says, there may be strong sexual content. Proceed with caution. Yes, we sure did have some fun discussing the different Lisa Jackson books we all read. It’s taken me three weeks to cool myself off in order to write the meeting notes (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). As it is, I am sitting in front of a fan with a glass of ice water, just in case. Lisa Jackson is quite a prolific writer, and has about 10 different series, a medieval trilogy, and another 10 stand-alones to her name. Our club covered 5 of her series, or is it series’? (I never know how to make that plural.) We read New Orleans, Wicked, Savannah, To Die, and West Coast. New Orleans Series: Cindy and Sharon K. read Lost Souls. Sharon L., Amy and I read Devious. Chris was about halfway through Absolute Fear. Jeff pointed out that in 2009 our club read Malice, also in this series. I just can’t remember if we liked it. The characters featured in the New Orleans books are Detectives Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya. Sharon K. and Cindy gave an excellent synopsis of Lost Souls and each gave the book a score of 7. Sharon L, Amy & I were quite jealous that their book seemed to have a better plot than ours, which consisted of extremely hot, young, and horny nuns and priests, who had sex all the time without being kicked out of the church. Amy went with a 2 and Sharon and I were very generous and gave it a 3. As stated above, Chris was only about halfway through his book, but was in the 5 range. To Die Series: I think this was one of the most interesting segments for me, mostly because Judy read Afraid to Die and gave it an 8 and Dave read Born to Die and gave it a 0. Yes, that’s zero, null, nada, nichts. Roxane said we basically didn’t want to know what she thought of the book she read. Judy enjoyed her mystery, which seemed to actually be a mystery rather than a romance novel. But Dave threw out some five dollar words that included sophomoric, and kept some four letter ones to himself. Wicked Series: This series seemed to contain a bit of the woo-woo. We heard about psychic activity, gratuitous masturbation, and a cult. Ok, I really tried to throw that in nonchalantly, but how does one manage to be nonchalant about gratuitous masturbation? Denise gave Wicked Lies a 7 and Lorraine, who read Something Wicked, also gave a score of 7. Raj and Janice read Something Wicked also, but were tied at 4.5, so clearly didn’t enjoy it as much as Lorraine. West Coast Series: Jeff was alone in this series, which only contains 2 books, so maybe it’s one Lisa has abandoned. He read Deep Freeze and rated it a 7. It can’t have been all that bad to get a 7, which makes me wonder why the last book in that series was published in 2007. Maybe she’s busy writing her more racey ones. As we all know, sex sells. Savannah Series: Lastly, Pat, Kim, Chris K., and Jennifer read Tell Me, the most recently published book in the Savannah series. Ratings were 7, 7, 6, and 6.5 in that order. It seemed to have a good mystery for a plot, which may have been the reason for the higher group rating. I think overall, this group was the most pleased (based on ratings) with their book. Rather than mention it in each series summary, I think it’s important to note that most, if not all, of Ms. Jackson’s books contain quite a bit of sexual content. A lot of them read like soap operas and were often just as corny. Don’t get me wrong, Luke and Laura were two of the most important people in my life in high school. I think the bottom line is that we at Crime & Beyond prefer our mysteries to have more crime less sex, more serial killers less serious petting, more burying of bodies less burying the one-eyed worm, more bump in the night less bump and grind, more hide the body less hide the pickle, more plant the evidence less plant the seed. I could go on, but I think you get my drift. Jody actually lucked out. She was out of town when I sent the email that we weren’t able to get any of the scheduled books and had to go to plan B and read Lisa Jackson. She read the book we were hoping to read; S.J. Bolton’s Dead Scared and gave it an 8-9 score. It was #2 in a series featuring DI Mark Joesbury and DC Lacey Flint investigating for the London police, and contained mysterious student deaths at Cambridge University. I read it myself and really enjoyed it too. P.S. you’ll have to cut me some slack if I got any of the names, books, ratings, etc. wrong. All the sex talk made me take terrible notes and the cool down period was so long, I could barely decipher what I had written. I do have a nice drawing of a cactus on my paper. Oh wait, that’s not a cactus. Um, never mind. We had a ton of Halloween costumes too, thanks to everyone who dressed up. Pat took 1st place as Flo the Progressive salesgirl, Sharon 2nd as Lizzy Borden, and Janice took 3rd as a survivor of Leopold’s Apple. For those who don’t remember, it was the torture/killing device used in the last Jo Nesbo book we read. Speaking of Jo Nesbo, next month we’re discussing Jo Nesbo’s The Phantom. Reminder email will come out today. Lucky for me we had enough books to go around at the meeting and for those who didn’t make it, the book list is on the website. So hopefully no one was waiting for my recap email for anything other than pure entertainment. Hope it delivered. Kerry